


the whisperings of the dead

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Series: reflections (a harry potter fanfiction collection) [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Peter Pettigrew Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7809703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Pettigrew, and the moments of static, the moments of tragedy, and the moments of bravery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the whisperings of the dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soliloquize](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquize/gifts).



> There are a few brief descriptions that aren't so pretty. Just a heads-up.

Sometimes, if he views them from a distance, he thinks that they are absolutely beautiful. The confident, funny James Potter, with his arrogant, graceful best friend Sirius Black. The intelligent, kind Remus Lupin. They're masterpieces, beautiful exhibits of art.

They're the best, the most beautiful. The infallible, worthy of worship even. They are like gods, whatever they wish is their command. They know of no trouble, but only of the best. Protected, sheltered, like a prized accomplishment. Put out for the world to see, an exhibit of beauty.

Sometimes he wishes he was better, he was like them. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he wishes he could be them. But he knows them well, well enough to know that they are flawed in the most human of ways. They fear, they break. They cry, they laugh. They make mistakes.

They're not gods, no, but they're the closest thing he knows to gods.

* * *

 

Peter Pettigrew keeps secrets. This is true, and this has been true for a very long time. Because Peter cannot remember a time where he hadn’t kept secrets, when he hadn’t been trying to protect himself, or protect those who had been his friends at the time. 

There are things he has done, many terrible things he has done, that keep him up at night, in the never-ending stream of regrets and regrets that never stop coming, the demons he swears he hallucinates because sometimes the difference between reality and his nightmares doesn’t exist, especially in the dead of night, when everyone is asleep. 

Well, the last part was a lie. None of the Death Eaters slept.

* * *

 

He remembers Hogwarts with a clarity sharpened from nostalgia and regret, and the startling vividness of regret. Apology even, because there is nothing about this that is easy. 

The thing is: he would take the suicidal thoughts for just _one_ more happy memory, even just one more minute of a time where he didn’t need to grow up, because he knows first hand what it’s like to make mistake after mistake, a continuous downward spiral that only leads to the gates of hell.

He is a survivor. He is a traitor. He is a liar, and brave, and he is a never changing shade of ambiguous morality, of a person who did the wrong things for the self motivated reasons.

* * *

 

There’s something ironic, as he looks back on the Marauders Map. It’s sometime early in the morning, and the sun has not risen, and he can see from the half open door no one. It’s dead silent, as it always is. No one dared to speak really, even their former friends and acquaintances were barely mentioned, because there’s the acute thought of there being a megalomaniac nearby always seemed to stir people into silence. 

His hand, the one he still has, itches. The metal one shines in the barely lit room, and it’s a patronising thought that runs through his head, because it seems all he can think about now is the past, is people long dead. 

It’s still better than thinking of _Him_ using ‘Wormtail,’ because Wormtail is the child that died during the war, the wayward Gryffindor that lost his way and never came back. Wormtail is the laughs and smiles of the Marauders, the insults that sprinkled the Marauders Map, the one that tried to please but failed every time. 

He thinks that a strangled laugh is more than appropriate, because he feels like drowning, drowning in a ocean of self made regrets, and his throat is filled with never uttered apologies and confessions never spoken to the dead, and it’s a fitting sound, because he knows the hand, _Him_ , will never let him die.

(He makes himself a promise: if he has the chance, he will take it, because it will be the only chance he has left.)

* * *

 

There’s an interlude here, of a burial of a body. It’s found by a fisherman, a perfectly preserved shroud made of old and thick velvet that dated back a few centuries at least, and there’s a body of a man. 

The right hand wrist down is missing, and the throat is covered with a button up shirt. The body is big, and there is no name. 

It’s a oddity. It’s also 1998, a few months shy of May. 

It’s a burial at sea. The fisherman douses the body in flammable liquids, and uses a lighter to set it on fire.

No one claims to have known about the whereabouts of Peter Pettigrew’s body, but that’s okay. No one cares.

* * *

 

He hesitates, for a split second. There’s noise in the mansion, noise all around, because prisoners are escaping, and among all the chaos, he hesitates. Stops, for a split second, and they escape. 

They apparate away, and they are gone, the most wanted prisoners of the Voldemort Regime, disappeared with a dead house elf saving their lives. 

The right hand chokes him, collapses his throat. The walls of it cave inward, skin and bone and blood spilling all over the floor, as the silver breaks the esophagus, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe and he’s dying, and in spite of it all, he is proud.

* * *

 

(This is a confession: The Marauders Map lives on. 

This is a truth: Peter Pettigrew is on it.

This is a lie: He was a coward until the very end.

This is not a secret: Peter Pettigrew is rightfully demonised for his actions, despised for his impact and his ledger of dead bodies, and he is dead, gone, not breathing. He is hated for killing good people, in his attempt to survive.

This is a proper secret, the kind that gets passed along from mother to daughter, father to son: He is a Marauder, for better or for worse. He is brave, in the worst way possible. He is a survivor, he is a constant. 

This is a final confession: Peter Pettigrew is all shades of gray, all shades of morality gone wrong, but he is still a Gryffindor.) 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr @noahronans :D


End file.
